Greystripe is a mobile advertising company that has recently raised $2 million from NBC’s Peacock Equity Fund.  Peacock Equity Fund is a joint venture between GE and NBC Universal.  This is Greystripe’s Series C round of funding.  Greystripe now has about $17.6 in total venture funding.

Greystripe previously raised funding from Incubic Venture Capital, Steamboat Ventures, and Monitor Ventures.  Greystripe will be powering the advertising on the applications for several media companies including Sci-Fi Channel, Bravo, and MSNBC.

Vevo is a music video website in stealth mode that was started by YouTube and Unviersal Music.  The company is currently seeking funding and is reportedly finding partners for their content.  Reuters recently revealed that CBS Corporation and NBC is in talks with Vevo to license and develop shows for Vevo.  Vevo is expected to officially launch in December and will have high quality music videos.  The website will also have music-related shows streaming.

YouTube will be providing the technology and back-end for the website while Universal Music will provide the content.  Sony Music is also on board with Vevo, but it is Warner Music and EMI have kept their distance thus far.  Rio Caraeff is currently the CEO of Vevo.  Vevo will make money from the advertising banners and text laced throughout the website.  Since the quality of video will be higher, Vevo hopes to have higher advertising rates than YouTube. About 40 people are being hired to work for Vevo.

Disney has decided to jump on board with online video streaming by sending over content over to Hulu.  That’s not all.  Disney has acquired 27% of the company.  Disney joins other Hulu owners NBC Universal, News Corporation, and Providence Equity Partners.  Soon Disney will be sending over shows like Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Grey’s Anatomy to start with.

“We are smiling big today because we are honored to be working with a company that quite frankly inspired us from the very start of Hulu. Walt Disney was a founder, an innovator, a person with an atypically high quality bar, and someone who was maniacal in his obsession to delight his customers. Hulu has always taken great inspiration in that example and the culture Walt Disney created (which Bob Iger and his team carry forward and push to new levels),” stated the Hulu blog regarding the partnership.

CBS and the CW are basically the only major TV networks left out of Hulu.  CBS is hosting high quality episodes of their own TV shows on CBS.com and TV.com.  The CW hosts full TV shows on their website too.

CBS is working on ways to compete against Hulu.  The CBS.com website has been thoroughly enhanced to stream high-quality episodes of their TV shows and these videos are linked to TV.com, a website that is owned by CBS as well.  Hulu removed their shows from TV.com recently.

In March, TV.com received about 679,000 unique U.S. visitors and streamed 3.4 million videos.  In February, TV.com has about 330,000 unique U.S. visitors and streamed only 1.6 million videos.  Hulu received abut 8.9 million U.S. visitors in March and streamed 349 million videos.  Hulu is run by NBC and FOX.

[via BusinessInsider]

Hulu, the video website run by NBC and FOX has loads of popular shows that they allow people to watch. They have three seasons of Arrested Development, new episodes of Family Guy, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, Chuck, Heroes, etc. Now a source at Silicon Alley Insider says that a deal for Disney content to appear on Hulu is basically done.

That means on Hulu we would perhaps see content from ESPN, ABC, and some Disney movies. If the deal works out with Disney and ABC shows starts to appear on Hulu, that only leaves CBS out as the outcast. ABC and CBS both currently steam shows on their website. CBS has very good quality, but ABC not as much.

[via BI/VentureBeat]

The video website that was put together by FOX and NBC has turned one years old.  The company has done a lot in that one year.  Currenly the website is top 300 on Alexa and sits at #49 on Quantcast, indicating that they get a good number of hits every month.  They even had their first commercial which aired during the Super Bowl and starred Alec Baldwin.  That commercial resulted in a 50% increase in traffic.

Before Hulu was introduced, many people doubted that the company would ever match YouTube’s success but they’ve proved the world wrong.

A feature that Hulu will be rolling out soon is a social network within the site.  This is where you can inform other users what you are watching.  Hulu has about 1,150 shows and about 550 movies on the site.  They had about 24 million viewers in January and streamed 250 million videos.

[via USA Today]

We’ll let you be the judge:

John Battelle of Federated Media recently interviewed Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu.  Hulu is a joint venture between NBC and FOX.  Jason Kilar is an Amazon.com veteran.  Battelle asked Jason how effective the ad on the Super Bowl advertisement for Hulu was.  It turns out that it was very much worth it.

Although Jason did not answer directly, Battelle was able to obtain a number from a different source.  It turns out that Hulu’s traffic jumped by 50%.  Considering that about 100 million people tune into the Super Bowl in the U.S., it is no surprise that Hulu’s traffic would see a sudden jump.

[via BI]

This year, ads on the Super Bowl costed about $2.6 million for a 30-second spot.  Getting an ad on the Oscars costs about $1 million less at between $1.4-$1.7 million.  NBC hosted the Superbowl and ABC hosts the Academy Awards.  Both media companies had to slash rates quite a bit after finding there was unsold inventory.

Last year, ABC sold commercial time for about $1.8 million.  In advertising revenue, about $68 million is expected to be brought in for ABC.  That is about a 16% decline from last year.  Last year about $81 million in revenue was made.

Peter Sealy, marketing professor at Claremont Graduate University and former movie industry executive believes that the ad revenue slow down for the Oscars is because the show is just too long.  He also said that the films this year are not spectacular.

I have to agree with Sealy here.  The Oscars this year just doesn’t seem fun as they used to be.  I think in terms of movies made this year, Slumdog Millionaire and Tropic Thunder helped save the industry.

[via LAT]

NBC Local Media has decided to go extra local by launching a Neighborhood News Pages (NNP) on nine of their owned-and-operated markets.  Of the nine markets that NBC is launching this platform on, seven of them are in the top 10 most populated cities in the nation.  The local markets include WNBC New York, KNBC Los Angeles, WMAQ Chicago, WCAU Philadelphia, KNTV San Francisco, KXAS Dallas-Ft. Worth, WRC Washington D.C., KNDS San Diego, and KTIS Hartford.

Neighborhood news will aggregate news from local NBC TV affiliates and organize the news and information by neighborhood.  This includes sports, health, local news, weather, traffic, and local events.  This is bad news for local newspaper company websites.  NBC clearly has the advantage by having a bigger budget to take on traditional news media companies.  There will be a lot of advertising poaching in the local markets as well.

“Our new Locals Only sites enable our users to be true insiders and to fulfill on that promise we need to deepen our coverage in local communities,” stated Brian Buchwald, SVP of local integrated media at NBC. Buchwald added that the NNP would “create more targeted ad impressions at a fraction of the cost.”

The news pages created for the NNP is based on Outside.in technology.

[via MediaPost]

“Much of my work here is done.”
-George Kliavkoff

George Kliavkoff, the chief digital officer told the staff at NBC Universal that he will be exercising an option in his contract to step down by the end of they year.  Kliavkoff was one of the masterminds behind the launch of Hulu, the startup that shook the online video industry.

“George came to NBC Universal when we were nowhere in digital,” stated Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC Universal. “We asked him to help us change the fundamental orientation of a traditional media company from an analog to a digital mindset. George did that.”  Kliavkoff also pushed for NBC’s role in broadcasting the past Olympics.

Where Will George Go From Here?
George indicated that he is interested in some sort of role as an investor, digital startup, or digital startup within a traditional company.”

Below is the full e-mail that he sent to the company (via paidContent):

(more…)

Hulu.com is airing NBC’s 30 Rock one week earlier than the season premier.  This way it helps build up the hype of the show.  I love the idea of putting up a show on the web before it hits the television screen, especially one that wins an Emmy.  

30 Rock is a show that was created by famous Sarah Palin impression expert, Tina Fey.  The show stars Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, Alec Baldwin, Jack McBrayer, Jane Krakowski, Keith Powell, Judah Friedlander, Maulik Pancholy, Scott Adsit, Katrina Bowden, Lonny Ross, Kevin Brown, and Grizz Chapman.

The above video will be available for about another week. Showtime did the same thing with Dexter and Californication.

General Electric (NYSE:GE) subsidiary NBC is planning on taking Saturday Night Live online with a new video site.  The Executive Producer of SNL, Lorne Michaels is planning on launching the site with a library of clips from the past and present.  The video site will also have clips from The Line.  The Line is a show created by producers, writers, and performers from SNL.  The site would have the same look & feel as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

SNL gained a lot of attention from Tina Fey’s portrayal of Sarah Palin.  SNL clips were viewed millions of times on Hulu and on NBC.com.  One of the ideas for the new video site will have individual cast member pages with top 10 clips of them.  The guest host would also decide their favorite SNL moments were. 

Monetizing the SNL site might be tricky because even sites like Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die is struggling.  And skits that include music clips would require royalty fees.  Bringing attention to the website will also be difficult as election time winds down.  It is just too difficult to replicate the hilarity of the clip below.

DoubleClick, the digital advertising firm that Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) bought for $3.1 billion in March 2008 has announced today that they will be powering online media advertisements on NBCOlympics.com.  DoubleClick has the ability to embed ads within the Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Silverlight 2 player. 

This feature is called DoubleClick In-Stream.  In-Stream supports Flash, Real Media, and Windows Media player.

“With hundreds of advertisers, multiple platforms and large site traffic spikes, we needed to work with a partner that could provide an integrated, scalable, robust solution,” said Steven Gold, Vice President, Sales Planning and Operations, NBC Universal Digital Media. “Thanks to DoubleClick In-Stream’s new support for Silverlight 2, we are able to monetize our groundbreaking online video coverage on the same platform we already use for display and mobile advertising. This lets our sales and operations teams work together really efficiently.”

Words from Google and Microsoft spokespeople

“Microsoft has always had a strong commitment to working closely with partners and the industry to enable them to leverage our tools and platform to deliver great user experiences. With Silverlight, we’ve extended that commitment to the advertising space,” stated Scott Guthrie, Corporate VP of Microsoft’s .NET Developer Division. “We’re pleased to see the investment DoubleClick has made to enable customers such as NBCOlympics.com to take advantage of Silverlight to offer compelling packages to their advertisers.”

“DoubleClick’s vision is to help publishers grow their revenues by creating great user experiences and providing compelling value to advertisers,” said Google Group Product Manager Ari Paparo. “By expanding the capabilities of DoubleClick In-Stream to work with Silverlight 2, we can make it possible for clients to create unique entertainment and advertising experiences without increasing their workload or creating new complex processes.”

Related Links:
1. Google press release
2. InformationWeek

Every weekday between today and mid-August, Hulu will be streaming a new movie, documentary, or sci-fi film.  The calendar of the films is available at: http://www.hulu.com/summer.  Here’s the catch: you won’t know what is playing until the day of.  While this is an annoying feature, I’m sure it’ll keep users coming back to Hulu out of curiosity.

Hulu’s first movie of the event is Lost in Translation starring Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray.  The movie is about a man that comes to Tokyo to film a whiskey commercial bonding with a woman that he would most likely not find himself getting along with.

Hulu Days of Summer has a widget too.  The widget can be embedded in blog posts, social networks, etc.  The widget can be seen below.

Hulu is a video website created through a partnership between NBC and FOX.  Hulu directly competes with Google’s YouTube.